What is the tone of the essay a modest proposal

Another difference between tonal languages is whether the tones apply independently to each syllable or to the word as a whole. In Cantonese , Thai , and to some extent the Kru languages , each syllable may have a tone, whereas in Shanghainese , [ citation needed ] the Scandinavian languages , and many Bantu languages , the contour of each tone operates at the word level. That is, a trisyllabic word in a three-tone syllable-tone language has many more tonal possibilities (3 × 3 × 3 = 27) than a monosyllabic word (3), but there is no such difference in a word-tone language. For example, Shanghainese has two contrastive tones no matter how many syllables are in a word. [ citation needed ] Many languages described as having pitch accent are word-tone languages.

In these instances, to fix the tone, you have to fix the way you think about a given subject. You have to back off, calm down, see other points of view, maybe even take some responsibility for whatever happened. When writing about such delicate subjects, you must not let a negative tone take over by ascribing motives to people: You just tell what they did, and let the reader read motive into it. You must write with forgiveness, understanding and humor. In some ways, this can be a payoff to examining your tone as you write: You change the writing, and the writing changes you. But if you find this is not possible with your subject, don’t be afraid to scrap a project that you discover has inherent problems with tone. You’ll be a better writer for it.